We speak with philosopher Scott Coley about the phenomenon of pastors and internet theobrogians publicly critiquing the work of credentialed scholars. Why is this so popular, how are those that do it so confident, and how are normal people fooled by it? As Scott asks in an article, "What conditions make it possible for otherwise reasonable people to believe that the carefully considered arguments of accomplished scholars are vulnerable to obvious and devastating objections raised by non-experts?" That article, published on his blog, made us want to speak with him, and the conversation evolved from there. We discuss expertise, misinformation, intellectual ghettoization, ideology, propaganda, truth, logical positivism, cults and psychopaths, and more. Scott names some names and pulls no punches.
The bourbon featured in this episode is Eagle Rare from Buffalo Trace Distillery.
The beverage tasting is at 2:54. To skip to the interview, go to 4:47.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
We speak with philosopher Scott Coley about the phenomenon of pastors and internet theobrogians publicly critiquing the work of credentialed scholars. Why is this so popular, how are those that do it so confident, and how are normal people fooled by it? As Scott asks in an article, "What conditions make it possible for otherwise reasonable people to believe that the carefully considered arguments of accomplished scholars are vulnerable to obvious and devastating objections raised by non-experts?" That article, published on his blog, made us want to speak with him, and the conversation evolved from there. We discuss expertise, misinformation, intellectual ghettoization, ideology, propaganda, truth, logical positivism, cults and psychopaths, and more. Scott names some names and pulls no punches.
The bourbon featured in this episode is Eagle Rare from Buffalo Trace Distillery.
The beverage tasting is at 2:54. To skip to the interview, go to 4:47.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology and spirituality.
Kyle:We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.
Randy:Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Kyle:Today, we're talking with Scott Coley, who is a philosopher at Mount St. Mary's University. And we follow him on Twitte, Randy and I have both talked about getting him on the podcast for a while. And then recently, he tweeted some stuff that I thought, okay, now we have to talk to him, because this is like right in our wheelhouse of stuff that we like to talk about here. Primarily though, I wanted to have him on to talk about a phenomenon that we've mentioned before on the podcast. And that is a kind of pseudo expertise, or pseudo intellectualism that you see amongst certain evangelical leaders, and we name a couple of them in the podcast so you know exactly who we're talking about, and a tendency that they have to critique actual experts when they say things that are maybe uncomfortable for the ideologies that the evangelical leaders have a vested interest in selling to the public. And Scott has a lot of things to say about that. And I thought it would be good to have him on to get his insight about why that happens, and why so many people seem to be on board for it, and how they just kind of don't notice that, you know, this is happening, that a non expert is critiquing an actual expert and getting applause for it. And like, what, how does that happen? How does it succeed? And why don't more of us notice that there's something wrong there? Um, so he has some really interesting insights into why that might be.
Randy:Yeah. And he, in doing so, has come to the defense of many of our friends and former guests of the show, some people like Beth Allison Barr and Kristen Kobes Du Mez. So I I'm just of the belief that the church needs more philosophers. And I mean that in, I mean that because we need to be called on our silliness. We need to be called on areas where we have strawman arguments, where we have fooled ourselves and when we've let ourselves be fooled, because you don't have to be afraid of that. You can actually have a more pure version of your spirituality in your faith journey. If you actually just face the reality, face the truth, and, and know that God can hold that, and if our God can't hold space with some of these inconsistencies, or half truths or an untruth, then we're in trouble. And it's probably not worth following that God anyways. Right? So that's why I think we need more philosophers. We need more people like Scott, we need more people like you, and introduces a whole lot more humility to people like me.
Kyle:Well, cheers to that. Speaking of cheers, so this is Eagle Rare, from Buffalo Trace Distillery who've been represented on our podcast several times at this point. Yeah, this five years ago, easy to find no problem. Now, you can't find it anywhere. I found this this past weekend.
Randy:Cool. How much?
Kyle:33 bucks.
Randy:Okay.
Kyle:And yeah, it wasn't like the reason everybody lined up, but it was like a nice surprise that they also had it too. So that's about what you'd expect to pay for it, should pay for it. It goes for more than that. But it's a, it's a fine dram, there's nothing wrong with this bourbon at all.
Randy:Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing it with us.
Kyle:Slightly older than the standard Buffalo Trace, I think.
Randy:I remember Eagle Rare being very straightforward and not super complex. And that's what, that's the nose that I'm getting on this.
Kyle:Yeah, it's been years since I've had it. I will say this is maybe a little better than I remember. So this is aged for 10 years. The standard Buffalo Trace is not aged nearly that long. So it is a significant step up in aging.
Randy:It's delicious. Cherries, honey. I don't get tons of oak.
Kyle:No remarkably for...
Randy:...a 10 year. Yeah, yeah, that's really really good.
Kyle:Yeah, very smooth. 45%. It's not gonna put any hair on your chest or anything.
Randy:It's better than a $33 bottle of bourbon.
Kyle:Yeah.
Elliot:I like it a lot. So it's smooth, especially on the front. And then as it trails off, it gets a little bit more citrusy for me or spicy.
Randy:Eagle Rare tastes like Eagle Rare every time. Like there's some...
Kyle:Yea, you always know what you're gonna get.
Randy:There's some variants within other bourbons that like whoa, this, this is different than what, I don't remember it like this. This tastes like Eagle Rare every single time. And I like that.
Kyle:I completely agree.
Randy:Yeah. All right. Well, if you find it on the shelves, you're dumb if you don't buy it. Can we say that?
Kyle:Yeah, agreed. Especially since...
Randy:Even if you don't drink bourbon...
Kyle:you could pretty easily make a small profit.
Randy:...and if you don't drink bourbon, someone you love does. So just buy it.
Kyle:Exactly. Excellent gift, this bourbon.
Randy:Uh, Buffalo Trace Distillery's Eagle Rare. Every time. Cheers.
Elliot:Cheers.
Kyle:Well, Scott Coley, thanks so much for being on A Pastor and Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Scott:It's my pleasure.
Kyle:So to start off, can you just tell our listeners who may not be familiar with you a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you got to be a podcaster about things like faith and philosophy and politics?
Scott:Sure.
Kyle:Those are the things that got us interested in having you on the show. So, who are you?
Scott:Sure, okay, so I am lecturer of philosophy and Director of the Global Encounters program at Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland. As far as the podcast goes, I've mentioned this a couple times on the podcast, I think, that was Melissa's doing, Melissa my, my spouse. She said, you should have a podcast and I was like, no, no, I shouldn't. She was like, well just record some conversations with people, you know, and see what happens. I said, okay. So I emailed some friends, and they said, sure, I'll do it. And I said to Melissa, you know, they said yes. She said, great, I've got the first three seasons planned out. Here's the list. I was like, oh, wow, okay. So that's how that, that's literally how that happened. I'm not even...
Kyle:And that, that podcast is called Faith, Philosophy and Politics, is that right?
Scott:That's, that's right.
Kyle:How did you, so how'd you get into philosophy?
Scott:So I began my undergraduate career with the intention of going to law school, because I thought, I really don't want to work for someone else. I enjoy arguing. And I could just become a lawyer and like, make some money, and then do what I want after that, and you know, have a good time doing it. And I was told that philosophy was a good pre law major. And so I signed up, I went and attended my first philosophy class, literally, the first class meeting of my first philosophy class, I thought, people get paid to do this?
Kyle:And the answer was not really. But they don't tell you that til grad school.
Scott:Right. But if you're lucky, you'll get health insurance. Right. So I had interests, you know, when I was in high school, that, to my mind, at that time, weren't, you know, were not academic interests. I just thought, you know, I daydream about stuff. And then I had the stuff that was going on at school. And I didn't realize, you know, that people do metaphysics, that's their job.
Kyle:There are people who made a career out of investigating their daydreams.
Scott:Right? Yeah, so that was, and that was it. I mean, that's, fall semester of my first year, I set my sights on a PhD in philosophy.
Kyle:Nice. Yeah. One more question before we launch into what I actually invited you here to talk about. We like to ask people if they're drinking anything they want to tell us about, since bar is part of the theme of our podcast. So anything in front of you or a favorite adult beverage you'd like our listeners to know about?
Scott:I'm not sure there are any I'd want to proselytize for.
Kyle:Oh, man. I have so many...
Scott:I would say the most delicious, the most exquisite beer that I've ever had is Bell's Hopslam IPA.
Kyle:Okay. Yeah. Familiar.
Randy:You're a hops fan?
Scott:Yes, sir.
Kyle:Sounds like it.
Scott:I used to, I used to enjoy a good bourbon. But at some point in my like, mid to late 20s, something happened and my body was just like, nope. No more of that.
Kyle:That sucks, man.
Randy:Yeah, bummer.
Kyle:I think I'd just give up.
Randy:Yeah.
Scott:Yeah, I developed some kind of aversion to it.
Randy:One more question about your, your background, your education. You have a master's in systematic theology from Notre Dame.
Scott:Correct.
Randy:For a philosopher, that's super interesting. Tell us why you did the systematic theology master's.
Scott:Oh, well, I just wanted to get acquainted with the landscape in theology because I, in my work as a philosopher, I didn't want to, you know, stray off the map in terms of orthodox theology, or, you know, or if it came to that, I just want, I just wanted to be aware of the landscape.
Randy:Okay. Interesting. Fun.
Kyle:Yeah. Would that more theologians would do the reverse.
Randy:Sure.
Kyle:We can edit that part out. I don't need to jab the theologians.
Scott:I have no comment on that.
Kyle:So the reason I actually wanted to have you on the show, we'd been actually talking about inviting you anyway, but then you posted this blog post, and then a few tweets from the blog post that really caught my attention on, on Twitter. And I thought we have to have you on to talk about this. So the blog post was called"Evangelicalism's Intellectual Ghettoization." And you say some stuff in there that I thought, okay, this guy's asking the right questions. We've talked about this a lot on the show. So let's, let's please talk about this. And you graciously agreed. So if that post happens to be fresh in your mind, would you mind giving our listeners just sort of a really brief synopsis of what that was about and what you had in mind there and what prompted you to write it?
Scott:Sure, sure. So what prompted me to write it, why don't I start there, what prompted me to write it was the, the tone and the quantity of criticisms that I saw coming at scholars like Kristin Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr, in particular, from people who, in my view, should know better. And these are, the people who it seems to me should know better are people who are well enough acquainted with academia, that is to say they've got some post secondary training, perhaps advanced degrees, right, like maybe even a PhD, who should be well enough acquainted with what goes on in academia to know that the tone that they're taking and the kinds of claims that they're making are out of order, borderline ridiculous.
Kyle:Can you give us maybe a concrete example? Can we name at least one name? So our listeners aren't like wondering and searching Twitter.
Scott:Alright, so, say, Kevin DeYoung.
Randy:There he is.
Kyle:There it is.
Randy:Alright. The Gospel Coalition.
Scott:So he's got, I'm given to understand that he has a PhD. I take it that it's, what, from a non-residential program or something like that? And I actually, to be clear, I actually find this important. This is not elitism, this is not, I would never criticize someone for furthering their education by whatever means they have available to them, given, you know, what stage of life they're in, etcetera, etcetera. But, you know, I think we're going to talk a bit about what goes on in grad school, and so I'll postpone some of those details. But it matters. It matters, spending time around other graduate students and faculty who, frankly, put you in your place on a regular basis. It matters. It really does. It enculturates you.
Kyle:And it matters that they don't share your presuppositions, and it matters what they went through in their own training. Like, trying to, trying to explain to sincere, thoughtful, religious people, at least in my experience, the difference between, say, a Bible college and a, you know, a state university, or you know, something even more well regarded than a state university, it's very difficult to do non-condescendingly. But there are some really important differences.
Scott:I hope we get to talk a little bit about that, because in the article that I wrote that we're referring to now, there, there were some folks again, who I think should know better, who were accusing me of, you know, elitism or illicit appeals to authority, or credentialism. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I don't accept that. So the point is this, right? There's this kind of swagger, right, this tone, like, like, you can sense that Kevin DeYoung is, you know, he's, he has situated himself in front of his laptop, and he's, you know, he's rolled up his sleeves. And he's getting ready to take care of business. And you can see that, you know, the fanboys or whatever, they're just salivating because he's getting ready to just tear this thing apart. And then, you know, you start reading, you know, I may be thinking of some other review, critical review here. But, but you start reading, and it's stuff like, well, you know, Beth Allison Barr, she's got the definition of complementarianism wrong. What? What? So she's, she's a scholar of gender. She spent much of her life, if not all of it, in SBC subculture, much of it in complementarian circles, she's suffered great personal costs for the stand that she's taken on compl... And you mean to tell me that she has got, in the book that she wrote about it that you're reviewing, she got the definition of complement... I just, I can't take this seriously. And is that elitism or credent...? No, no, no. The point is, it's like, it's like, I think some of these guys, it's like they took a critical thinking course, and they've got their list of problems that arguments have, right?
Kyle:Yeah. It's like they've taped the fallacy list to their laptop.
Scott:Precisely. So they've got their list. Right? And so they say, I disagree with the conclusion of this argument, so there must be some problem with the argument. Okay? So far, so good, sort of, right? But then if there's a problem with the argument, it's got to be one of these problems. And they accuse scholars of like these really basic, elementary fallacies, right?
Kyle:Yeah.
Scott:And now, is it the case that like, if you're a professional scholar, then you never commit some kind of ad hominem or something? No, of course not. Right? I mean, humans, we're human beings, right? Even if we're, you know, working in our area of expertise, we make errors, right? The point, rather, is that if you're looking at a professional scholar, right, who is laying out her considered views in writing over a course of, you know, a year or more and having other scholars look at the work before it gets published, you're not, it's not, they're not going to be a whole book, you know, about complementarianism where she gets the definition wrong. I'm sorry you don't like her definition of complementarianism. Go write something about that. But the fact that she uses a definition of a term that isn't the one you prefer doesn't mean she got it wrong. It's ridiculous. And then, and then it's, you know, two paragraphs, and then on to the next thing. And they do this thing where they lay out like 15 objections. And that's just not how any of this works.
Kyle:Yeah. So in the, in the blog post you mention our old friend, Duane Gish, I believe his name was, who became famous for that, right? Yeah. And I remember that because, you know, I grew up a certain kind of conservative evangelical, everybody I knew was a creationist, and I remember starting to study that in college, and you run into that immediately. It was like their favorite trick was to just throw as many arguments at you as possible in as rapid succession as possible, because you just, who has time to respond to all of them? And if you take the time to respond to one and then you're out of time, they say, well, 20 others you didn't even touch!
Scott:Yeah, yeah, it makes for great theater in like a public debate and crowds love it. But real scholars find it unspeakably irritating.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:Yeah.
Scott:And that's why, you know, I'm given to understand, it's often difficult to find scholars who are willing to, like, do public debates.
Kyle:Yeah. For good reason. Yeah.
Randy:Yeah. And to be fair, it's not just Kevin DeYoung, right? There's...
Scott:Oh no, yeah, there's a bunch.
Randy:...Denny Burk, and you know, many others who end up, what really gets me--I'm a pastor, and I love, I have loved when people stroke and just, you know, really, really make my ego just explode and expand and make me feel like I'm the center of their spiritual universe and everything that I say is gospel truth, right? People love being held in that kind of esteem and honor. But what I quickly found out when I was around people like Kyle and other experts is that, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not the foremost expert at everything.
Kyle:I thought you're gonna say I was a dick and told you your sermon sucked.
Randy:I felt like that went without saying, but, but no, you, when you, when you get met with true expertise, you realize that you don't have it in these areas, and in just the vast array of areas. And that's a, that can be a scary thing for people like me. But there's this culture, subculture within Christianity, in particular evangelicalism I would say, that, that makes the pastor or the church leader out to be the person who you check with to make sure that everything's right. You know what I mean? Where, this person wrote this book on gender roles within the scriptures and within the church, I'm gonna check with my pastor on that one. And there's a problem there, because people, whether it's Kevin DeYoung or Denny Burk, who have a few degrees, or whether it's pastors who have a master's in, in theology, or whatever they have or don't have, we look at these people as the end all be all, and we're realizing that just doesn't work. And the guys who have this power are really insecure right now. You could almost feel these critiques coming. Like, I knew it was gonna happen. And I was just disappointed by how in such poor taste they happened, but I'm so glad there's scholars like you who have people's backs, like Kristin Du Mez, like Beth Barr, like Jemar Tisby, like many, many others, who are getting slaughtered right now in ridiculous fashion that's not in good faith.
Scott:Well said. And that's another, I try to do the quote tweet or the direct reference. So you'll notice, like, in the, in the thing that I wrote that you correctly inferred was about criticisms of folks like Beth Allison Barr, I didn't mention any specifics--well except, I did, there was the one Kevin DeYoung reference, because, although I didn't mention him by name, right, but I mentioned the bit where he says, you know,"Junia was probably a man. Next point." Right? Because that was so outrageous. Yeah, so I try to mention specific names pretty sparingly, but one point where I did mention Kevin DeYoung by name--and by the way, I mean, I think we've now covered both of the two times that I've like, critiqued Keving DeYoung, so I don't want it to sound like that's my mission in life or something--but another time when I mentioned him specifically was when he wrote that piece about, you know, basically, like, stop attacking white evangelicals. And just to be clear, no one is like, as far as I know, certainly, certainly I'm not, no one's attacking, like, or criticizing the median white evangelical. That's not the point. Do I wish the median white evangelical would do better? Yeah. But my concern is with the pastors who have created a subculture in which their parishioners think it's appropriate to go to the pastor for answers about everything. They're the ones who created this situation. And, and I think you're absolutely right that some of them look to be terrified at what's going on right now. Because here's what's happened. You've got a whole bunch, a growing number--larger than, as far as I know, ever before--a growing number of scholars who have taken an interest in what goes on in this subculture, who don't work for any institution that these guys can control. And so typically the way they, they get people to be quiet is, you know, they hire em at their seminary or wherever--I'm thinking of seminary faculty here, but similar dynamics play out with pastors and their parishioners who are paying the bills, right? You get your job at a seminary, and you buy a house, you've got a mortgage, you've got kids, and you don't wanna lose your job. And so you keep your mouth shut about certain things. And if you don't, you're, you find yourself on the academic job market, which is a place no one wants to be, I assure you.
Kyle:Yeah, I can think of people that I know personally off the top of my head that that's happened to, so that's real.
Randy:Yep.
Kyle:So you, you use a really hilarious analogy in this post, maybe you can share it with our listeners, involving a famous basketball player,
Scott:Right. So I completed my undergraduate work at UNC Chapel Hill. So I have this thought experiment where I'm playing basketball down in Woollen Gym and in walks Vince Carter, UNC great, who was, at the time when I was an undergraduate, I think pretty much in the prime of his professional career. And so in the thought experiment, I challenge Vince Carter to a game of one on one and proceed, not only to defeat him, but to absolutely dismantle him and expose all of the flaws in his game. Right? Now, if I told you a story like that, in all seriousness, and expected you to believe it, you would think that I was completely delusional, not only for believing it myself, but also delusional for expecting you to believe it. Right? Because it's just not the case that someone of my stature and ability, whatever, would ev, would even score a single basket against Vin... unless I did like, you know, a fadeaway hookshot from the top of the key and just got lucky and like, you know, maybe, maybe one basket went in.
Randy:Or like, took out his leg.
Scott:Right? Yeah, there's just no way. That, that's sort of analogous to these guys who are total non-experts, who show up and... Some people, I don't know if they're, like, willfully not getting the point when they accuse me of credentialism and things like this; the point is not that you can't question experts or ask questions or whatever. Like, I spend most of my time professionally teaching undergraduates and I love it, and I love when they ask questions, and I love when they raise objections, right? So it's not that there's, it's like, hey, you know, be quiet and, you know, let the, let the grownups talk. That's not the point. The point is, when you show up with a certain kind of attitude, and you've got this cadre of fanboys around, who are like, oh, yeah, he's really, you know, he, he really nailed it right there, you know, destroyed, dismantled, you know, flame thrower emoji or whatever. And it's like, that is delusional. It really is. And let me go down the list of informal fallacies that I learned in my sophomore year of college.
Kyle:That, that, that I learned from people like the person you're currently...
Scott:Exactly.
Kyle:...delusionally destroying. But yeah, I agree with you, you definitely get the sense that somebody at some point took one of those classes and thought they understood higher thought and criticism, and now they're just applying these bullet points or whatever.
Scott:Yeah, yeah, that's the toolkit. That's the toolkit. So they're gonna reach into the, into the toolbox, and they're gonna, they're gonna pull out, you know, which... And it's almost like it's a contest to see who can find something that looks like one of these informal fallacies and point it out and explain why it is, and then that's, and then they win.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:Yeah.
Scott:It's just, it's not how it works.
Randy:Tell me what you think of this Scott, but I mean, I've, I've said many times, and I'm just convinced, that the moment that we find ourselves in with these books that have been coming out, like you said, it's been fairly unprecedented that people with certain levels of expertise are writing books that are palatable for normal people like me, right? And they're doing an amazing job of it, and really, really getting under the foundation of a lot of patriarchy within the church, a lot of militarism within the church, a lot of really, really unChristlike things within evangelicalism. And it feels like one last gasp when you see articles from the Gospel Coalition coming out slamming these books, or when you see Denny Burk having Twitter feuds. And I actually take that as a good sign in many ways. I don't know what you think. But I've grown up within evangelicalism, and I sense a really, really severe insecurity from these guys, because they can feel the constructs of complementarianism, or the constructs of a number of different doctrines, kind-of, people, the fleece being pulled from in front of people's eyes, and they're starting to get insecure that maybe this won't last, maybe this will be a little subculture within the subculture, almost. We're losing our power and authority. What are your thoughts on that?
Scott:As far as the insecurity, I think some of them are insecure. I think some of them don't know enough to be insecure. At the same time, as far as, you know, prospects for the future, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess about what, you know, what's gonna happen in the future with respect to these things, because they have a way of coming back, you know? Like you saw with, you know, the conservative resurgence in the SBC.
Kyle:Yeah. So the part of your, of that blog post that most made me want to talk to you, and I think it's towards the end, you say this, I'm gonna quote it. You ask a question. You say,"What conditions make it possible for otherwise reasonable people to believe that the carefully considered arguments of accomplished scholars are vulnerable to obvious and devastating objections raised by non-experts?" So one of my interests, academically, but also popularly, is expertise, how it functions in public discourse, why people are so hostile to it and resistant to it, why people sorta mass around misinformation and conspiracy theories and stuff like that. It's something we've talked about quite a bit on the podcast. I think that's the right question to ask. I wish more people were asking it. A few people are investigating it professionally from several different disciplines. Most people aren't aware of that. Most people who talk about problems of misinformation and problems of, you know, why does everybody believe, apparently, that the vaccines are some kind of unreliable thing, possibly part of a hoax--like, a shocking number of people believe that, a shocking number of those people are educated--and you know, the solutions that people suggest or the sort of off the cuff explanation that they give of things like that are usually ignorant of most of the work that's being done on this question. So I think it's the right place to focus and you, you give a little, you know, sort of a, wave your hand at maybe here's part of what could be going on. So what do you think is going on? Gimme your sort of proto theory about that, and then I'll tell you what maybe I think is going on, and we can, we can compare notes.
Scott:Sure, sure. So I think that it has to do with ideology and propaganda. So ideology, for the listener, is a, is a system of belief and belief formation that's oriented around social or political objectives rather than forming true beliefs. Right. And ideology is abetted by things like motivated reasoning, right? So if it's costly for me to believe that something is true, then that's gonna make it harder for me to believe that it's true. If it's costly for me to abandon a belief that I hold, then it's going to be more difficult for me to abandon that belief in the face of countervailing evidence. In fact, evidence gets pretty tricky when we get into the territory of propaganda, because evidence has to do with, you care about evidence if, if your objective is to form true beliefs, right? Well, if the way that the belief functions is not to track truth, but rather to further certain kinds of social, political, economic, whatever objectives, then evidence is kind of irrelevant. Right? But ideology has a way of tricking you into thinking that, like, you're taking account of evidence. I would point to something like the Creation Science movement. And I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that creation science is like this big conspiracy where like, you know, Ken Ham and Tim LeHaye, like, got together, you know, in a back room someplace and sketched out, like, okay, we're going to do this creation science thing and then here's where we're gonna end up. That's not how ideology works. It's not a conspiracy, right? Ideology tends to pull on whatever is available to build narratives that legitimize the prevailing social order. Okay, so creation science, there's this element of propaganda to it, right. And it's a particular kind of propaganda, which appeals to some noble ideal in service to an agenda that undermines that ideal. What does creation science appeal to? Science, scientific method. In service to an agenda that promotes pseudoscience over and against the findings of, like, actual scientists. And if you look at, say, the second half of the 20th century, how this developed, right, we went from a place where like, even quite a few fundamentalists embraced an interpretation of the first couple chapters of Genesis that could accommodate modern paleontology. Right? So Day Age or gap theories, right? There's always, there's been consistent skepticism about, like, the methodological naturalism of evolutionary biology. Right? But at least as far as like, you know, evidence that the earth is millions of years old, most evangelicals, and as I say, like, quite a few fundamentalists could even accommodate that, had no problem with that. Well, fast forward to like the 80s and 90s, as a byproduct of this creation science movement, and you've got, I don't know what, like a majority of evangelicals who believe that, that the Earth was created in six 24 hour periods no more than 10,000 years ago. So creationism is synonymous with young earth creationism, right? Now, what effect does this have on cognition? And how does this function institutionally? So you've got a whole bunch of evangelicals who are ready to believe, particularly when motivated reasoning gets a foothold in something to do with religious conviction, right, who are, who are prepared to believe that the scientific establishment and mainstream media are disseminating disinformation. And now the idea is not that all evangelicals reject all science all the time. I'm sure plenty of evangelicals take their cholesterol medication. Right? But, but when it's convenient, when it serves their interests, they'll say, well, the scientists are just, you know, I don't know if they're lying or they're deceived, it's spiritual warfare, you know, what it is, right, but, but they're, but they're all wrong. And there's a social component to this as well, because the reading of Genesis 1-9 facilitated by creation science is a reading that was once used to defend racial hierarchy. I mean, as late as like the mid 60s, you see references to the curse of Ham and things like this used to defend racial hierarchy. And it's still used today to defend gender hierarchy. Right? Genesis, this reading of Genesis 3. Okay, so that's where you see the ideology and the propaganda kind of come together so that the propaganda is facilitating a defense, a theological defense, of certain kinds of social hierarchy. All right, now institutionally. Well, if you're a creationist you're not just going to... Everybody knows, everybody, the median layperson knows that the gold standard for academic excellence is peer reviewed journals, right? Well, if you're a creation scientist, you're not gonna go publish in, in like a legitimate peer reviewed journal. So what do you do? You set up your own peer reviewed journals. And peer review is in air quotes here, right? That is, you get together with some other people who share your basic outlook and you have, like, these minor intramural debates about this or that thing, these, these hairs that you split with the other creation scientists, but you're, but you're promoting creation science. And the journal is churning out supposedly peer reviewed articles on creation science. You see this with complementarianism, with the Journal on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of reading any of their offerings. But for the most part, it's, I mean, it's unreadable. It's, at no point do you sense that you're in the presence of an actual argument. And it's all peer reviewed. Air quotes, "peer reviewed."
Kyle:Well, it is, I mean, they are peers.
Scott:Yeah. But the way that the quote unquote peer review process works with these echo chamber type, type journals is that you've got everybody who's basically pulling in the same direction, and you may not know the exact name of the author if you're the reviewer, but you know that, like, they're a friend of the, the enterprise, and you're going to offer maybe some helpful feedback. I would love to see what the acceptance rate for some of these journals is, like, how many papers they actually reject.
Kyle:They're not gonna tell you.
Scott:No, no I don't think they are.
Kyle:So, so do you think, because you used the word propaganda a lot, right? Propaganda is intentional, you don't accidentally peddle propaganda.
Scott:So, so, so the kind of propaganda that we might call undercutting propaganda, right, so it appeals to an ideal in service to an agenda that undermines that ideal. It's a very specific kind of propaganda. My view is that it can be actually transmitted unintentionally, particularly once it becomes institutionally ensconced.
Kyle:Sure.
Scott:Now it could be intentional. So, to take another example, right? Look at the antebellum south, suppose that you own a plantation in the antebellum south. You've got other people to do all your work for you, to do all your chores for you, serve you all your meals, et cetera, et cetera, right? You got two options, basically. You can look around and say, yeah, this is as it should be. You know? And you develop this whole set of ideas about racial hierarchy, et cetera, et cetera, to justify the standing order, right? That's one of your options. The other option is to say, my parents and my grandparents and all my friends are terrible people. This is, this is incredibly unjust. That would come at enormous cost to you, economically, socially. You're gonna have to go live someplace else, and you're gonna have to probably leave town in the middle of the night to get out alive. So it's gonna be really difficult for you to come to that realization because of all the costs involved. Okay, now, the kind of propaganda that you see from antebellum defenders of slavery is an appeal to freedom, noble ideal, freedom, liberty, right? Appealing to liberty to defend the institution of slavery. I mean, that strikes you as bizarre probably, right, but it was the liberty to own slaves. Because to their way of thinking, the liberty of the slaves themselves was not at issue. It wasn't even, you know, worth considering, right?
Kyle:Becuase the hierarchy of the races was well ensconced in the ideology.
Scott:Exactly. So, so they're appealing to the ideal of liberty in defense of the institution of slavery, which of course totally undermined slavery. That was the whole argument against slavery, right, was that it's wrong to deprive people of their liberty in this way.
Kyle:Yeah.
Scott:Yeah. Okay. So in that way, you could potentially disseminate propaganda unintentionally.
Kyle:Yeah. Great, thank you for offering that. I'm interested and excited to read that book when it comes out, for sure. I would add to that maybe just the element that it can be enormously costly and enormously difficult and in some cases, I think, actually impossible to discern on your own which elements of your belief system are ideological and propagandist in the way that you describe, and which elements actually track the truth or the evidence or whatever on some objective scale. And so you said the phrase "echo chamber" at one point, and I think that's exactly the right place to press. A philosopher named Thi Nguyen, who you may be familiar with--we just recently had him on the podcast--has done really excellent and important work, I think, on the epistemic phenomena of echo chambers and how those function and how they're resistant to inputs of new information, how they're resistant to argument, and how they're resistant to actually encountering opposed views, and even, you know, working your way through an argument with with an opposed party. Because what the echo chamber is fundamentally about is not your belief, it's not about the evidence, it's not even--maybe we'd use the word ideology differently, but I don't think it's fundamentally about that--it's fundamentally about who you trust. And there's always some authority, usually the first one you encountered, or maybe the first one you encountered after some significant life change, that you're going to trust more than others. And often it's people like your pastor. And so I want to say it's important for, if we're going to make genuine progress on the kinds of issues that aren't, they're not just affecting evangelicals--we've been talking about problems with this sort of thing amongst evangelicals--but these, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kind of problem is maybe the most pressing issue, period. Because it's the thing that's keeping humans from making meaningful progress on climate change. It's the thing that is giving rise to authoritarianism, right wing authoritarianism, globally. It's the thing that's preventing people from getting vaccinated in the midst of a pandemic that's killed millions of people. It's not just an evangelical phenomenon. And if we're going to make meaningful progress on like, urgent issues like that, I think it's crucial that the people with the ability to have, to make these analyses, and the people with the power to implement them in their policies, recognize that it's possible to be rational and to act in this way. And I'm using that word rational advisedly. It's not like all things considered tracking the evidence, but it's, if you were in their position, and you had the sources of information that they had, and you trusted the people that they trust, for good reasons, usually, you would probably believe that too and you would probably act on those beliefs. And I think, until we can come to terms with the fact that the person on the other side of this issue probably isn't stupid, and many times they're quite intelligent and educated--I'm sure Kevin DeYoung is not an idiot; I haven't spoken with him personally, but he's probably sincere and he may even be rational to behave in the way that he is, or the people under him may be, you know, rational to behave the way that they are--and if we're going to make any kind of, like, meaningful progress on the issue, writing them off as something other than that is, is unhelpful, but I think that actually marries quite well with the sort of ideology critique that you're, you're offering.
Scott:And if I could, I think there's one other, in my view, a lot of what goes into the heading of deconstruction, evangelical deconstruction, is actually decoding this kind of propaganda. And I think another extremely corrosive bit of propaganda that's specific to, like, conservative evangelical subculture, is illegitimate appeals to the authority of Scripture. And by that I mean this: if we're having a debate about what the Bible means--I see this all the time--so let's say you've got a complementarian who says, you know, the Bible says that women should be quiet in church and should never be an authority over men ever, etc, etc. And then an egalitarian comes along and says, well I don't, I don't agree that that's what the Bible says. And then the complementarian responds by saying, well why don't you accept the authority of Scripture?
Kyle:Yeah.
Scott:What? Okay, so first of all, that's a non sequitur, just that, that doesn't make any sense. Because you and I, we can disagree about the significance of the white whale in Moby Dick while agreeing completely that Moby Dick was written by Herman Melville. Right? So we can disagree about what the Bible say and we both, we both agree that it's, you know, the word of God, authoritative. Okay. So first of all, the non sequitur. But secondly, and I think more interestingly, for my purposes, is that it's actually a form of propaganda. It appeals to the ideal of putting God's word in authority or God in authority over human beings, right, but it actually is in service to a particular kind of agenda that undermines that ideal. Because what's the purpose of appealing to the authority of Scripture in the context of a debate about how to interpret Scripture? Well, the purpose is to say, look, this is what the Bible says, it says what I say it says, and if you disagree with me, then you're not just rejecting what I say, you're rejecting what God says. So basically, I'm trying to shift the terms of the debate in such a way that I have supplanted God as the authority on the issue at hand. And that's a really, really toxic move. And I see it all the time.
Elliot:Friends, before we continue, we want to thank Story Hill BKC for their support. Story Hill BKC is a full menu restaurant, and their food is seriously some of the best in Milwaukee. On top of that, Story Hill BKC is a full service liquor store, featuring growlers of tap available to go, spirits, especially whiskies and bourbons, thoughtfully curated regional craft beers, and 375 selections of wine. Visit storyhillbkc.com for menu and more info. If you're in Milwaukee, you'll thank yourself for visiting Story Hill BKC, and if you're not, remember to support local. One more time, that's storyhillbkc.com.
Randy:Scott, in preparation for this interview, I read a bunch of your blog articles, and they're fantastic. Everyone should go read them. They're worthwhile. You do a lot of critiquing of evangelicalism, and we need to say, you, I'm gonna let, you know, you're, you have this Batman persona we're maybe no one knows, but you're a Christian, right? I mean...
Scott:Oh absolutely.
Randy:...you're even, you're a Protestant Christian.
Scott:Mmhmm.
Randy:Yeah, so you care about these things, not just from a philosophical point of view, but from a Christ follower point of view. And as I read through these articles, I just found this, there was this big huge thing floating in my head that just tied them all together. And it's this ironic reality that evangelicals really really love the idea of the truth, right? We, when you talk about Christianity, especially Protestantism, and then especially evangelicalism, and then especially fundamentalism, this word "truth" is just high and mighty above, over and above anything, any ideal. John MacArthur just recently, you know, was found to say, everybody cares about religious freedoms and religious liberties; I don't care about religious freedom, I care about the truth. And his church stands up and gives him a standing ovation, you know? So this, this group of people who say, we care the most about the truth, the truth is everything to us, as I'm reading your articles, and reflecting on conversations and on my own worldview for most of my life, it made me ask the question, do evangelicals truly care about the truth? What's your thoughts on that?
Scott:I think evangelicals care very much about the truth. I think the, the issue that we're confronting now is that in certain subsets of evangelicalism, people are absolutely convinced that they've got the truth, and they don't need to investigate any further. So I think they care about the truth. I think they, they just, they think they've got it, and they're, and they're sort of ready to, I guess, ready to implement it or...? Well, I don't know.
Randy:So when you say you care about the truth and you think you have it, and then you're presented with literal evidence that says maybe what you believed was truth or thought was truth isn't anymore. And you're willing to say, and you went into this before, you're willing to say, I don't care about that evidence, I have the truth.
Scott:Right.
Randy:Like, for some, for some oddball reason, I've got it, you don't, evidence be damned. Does that really mean that they're, they're after the truth, or they just want to be right, or don't want their worldview tips upside down a little bit?
Scott:So I think it's, I think it's partly what we, what we've discussed in terms of ideology and social hierarchy and that the beliefs are oriented towards certain social goals rather than tracking truth. I think it's also due to a certain kind of reaction to what we might say is the culmination of enlightenment rationality that we find in the middle of the 20th century. There's a certain way of thinking about truth, the nature of truth and the nature of evidence--and I'm sure Kyle could could run through this just, just as, just as well--but I think kind of the apogee of the notion that all truth is empirically verifiable, we find in this view called logical positivism in the middle of 20th century. And philosophers realized pretty quickly, as far as these things go, pretty quickly that this was, this was a mistake. For some reason, the folks, you know, in some other departments didn't get the memo. I don't know. But I think, I think evangelicals were among those who didn't get the memo. And then, and by that, I mean this. If you think that all objective truth is empirically verifiable, then what do you do with like claims about morality that aren't empirically verifiable? Like, so, a claim that's empirically verifiable--water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level. You don't believe me? There's a procedure we can follow. We will take some water down to sea level, we will cool it to 32 degrees, and we will watch it freeze. And if you disagree with me that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level at that point, I don't know what to tell you. There's, there's something wrong with your cognition, right? Because I've just demonstrated for you that this is the case. Okay. What about stealing is wrong? If I say stealing is wrong, and you disagree with me, like, what procedure do we follow for me to persuade you that it's wrong? There isn't one. I can show you that you don't like being stolen from, I guess, but that's not the same. There's plenty of stuff that you don't like that's not wrong, you know? Okay, and what about claims about basically anything that's not empirically verifiable? Right, like the existence of God, etc, etc. So what the logical positivists said was, well, if it's not empirically verifiable, then it's just, you know, like your opinion. So morality, opinion, emotion, manipulation, but whatever it is, it's not truth. The kind of fundamentalist or broadly evangelical reaction to this was to say, rightly, to reject the notion that like, we can't have any kind of moral truth, or we can't know truth about God, etc.--I think that's, you know, it's good that we rejected that--but rather than just rejecting the supposition that all truth must be verifiable, which is what we should have done, they said, my verification is in the Bible. Right? So I got all my truth about morality, metaphysical claims about the nature of God, etc, etc., it's all in the Bible. And of course, I mean, what does the Bible say? Are you going to listen to the guy who says, the Bible says we should pursue justice? Or are you going to listen to the guy who says that the Bible says we should have segregated schools? You've got, you've got to have, you gotta be able to reason about these things. And I think that that's how you end up with a bunch of white evangelicals, who care very much about the truth, who think they've got the truth, who are totally immune to changing their minds on the basis of evidence.
Kyle:Because the only evidence, the only thing they countenance as evidence, is the plain reading of the text as interpreted by their authority.
Scott:Precisely, precisely.
Kyle:Yeah.
Scott:Kyle, is that, is that, what do you think about that? What do you think about that?
Kyle:Um, no, I think that's an interesting read. I wouldn't have thought to compare it to positivism. But, and I think that's gonna raise the hackles of some evangelical leaders who might hear this podcast, you've kind of thrown down the gauntlet there, accusing them of being logical positivists.
Scott:I don't know of any other way to explain it. And how, how else do you explain the, the apologetics industrial complex, right? Where it's like, we're gonna beat them at their game with evidence, etc., etc.
Kyle:Yeah, so that's interesting, because most of those, yeah, most of those, not all, right, there are some that will, like, openly acknowledge their empiricism or whatever, they still wouldn't consider themselves positivists, but a lot of them, the most famous evangelical ones, would, like, strongly disavow logical positivism, and they would claim some kind of classical apologetic method that starts in metaphysics, and then kind of narrows to, you know, we make the metaphysical case, and then we get to the empiricist stuff, and then, like, the Bible is the very last step of our apologetic. People like Bill Craig would argue that way.
Scott:So I'm not, to be clear, I'm not saying that these folks are themselves logical positivists. I only meant to say that logical positivism is the apogee of this attitude toward...
Kyle:...this kind of...
Scott:...truth vis-à-vis, you know, empirical confirmation.
Kyle:Sure, sure. I just want to, yeah, I just want to say there, there are non-positivist exemplars we could point to, and there are non-positivist versions of it.
Scott:Right.
Kyle:There are straightforwardly rationalist versions of it. But, like, by the time it trickles down to the attitude of the person in the pew, it might actually be indiscernible from a kind of naive positivism just based on whatever shows up in the text when you open it. And of course, whatever shows up in the text when you open it is going to be decided by the sermons you've heard for the last 20 years. Yeah, and that just is Christianity.
Scott:That's exactly right.
Kyle:Randy has left, so I guess this was just too much philosophy. He's just gotten up and walked away.
Randy:I was about to cough a lot. So...
Scott:No, we didn't mean to bore you, Randy, is there something else you'd rather talk about?
Kyle:He didn't even hear that, his headphones aren't on. So like, I remember, my dad, I'm confident saying this, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't listen to the podcast, but if you are listening Dad, I love you. I remember him telling me one time about his, his new pastor who he was very proud of, because he had a doctorate. And he was like, he studies the same thing you do. It's in philosophy of religion. I thought, oh, that's really interesting. I'm gonna go Google this guy. He had a Doctor of Ministry from a relatively unknown seminary. But, like, the person in the pew, they're not gonna be able to parse the fine grained distinctions between specialties and levels of expertise. And it's the, it's the responsibility of that person with the Doctor of Ministry to make sure his congregation knows that he is not an expert in the philosophy of religion, or in, you know, textual exegesis or any other damn thing other than the specific courses that, that he was tested on. So they don't do that. And they know that they don't do that. And so, in my view, those who wield their non-expertise in that way, are not just intellectually culpable, I think they're morally culpable. So do you agree, is that the difference between the kind of expertise that someone like Beth has, and the kind of expertise that someone who maybe got an MDiv from a seminary or a Bible college might have, and then they wouldn't became a pastor?
Scott:Sure, sure. And I don't, and you know, I mean, I understand that the purpose of a seminary is very different from the purpose of a research university. And so I wouldn't want to say that, like, you know, the aims of the curriculum at a seminary are illegitimate or anything, they're just different, right? And so you shouldn't, you shouldn't think that, you know, completing a course of training at one kind of institution has equipped you to engage... Again, like, ask questions, raise objections. The point is not to say you don't question experts. The point is, let's be clear about what kinds of mistakes you can reasonably expect an expert to make.
Randy:Yeah, and I think that's a problem in this conversation as well, when you talk about expertise and how people go about trusting certain people, is, you can go to any person, whether it's anti-vaxxers, maskers, any of it that we're talking about in our world today, and they'll have their pet expert that has an MD behind their name or a PhD behind their name. And because they have those credentials, what they say is taken seriously, but they're one out of their, they're outside of all their peer, the peer agreement. But you, you see people saying well, I know an epidemiologist who said this is all crap. Well, unfortunately, a vast majority of epidemiologists disagree with this guy and think that he's crazy. So what do you do then, when you have your pet experts who people can trump and say, this makes what I believe okay, even though it's totally not true?
Kyle:Yeah. I'll give you my answer and then Scott, whatever you think. I mean, I, the thing I always try to stress is not what an expert thinks or even the expert. It's what the consensus, the established consensus, of the experts believes at this moment, based on the evidence that's currently available. And that presumes an understanding of how certain kinds of methodologies work, right? Where in a field like epidemiology, your evidence base changes sometimes hourly, right? So the consensus of the experts might be different than it was at 11 o'clock this morning.
Randy:And that's a good thing.
Kyle:And it's a good, it's exactly how it was designed to be. When you're talking about a field like biblical studies, things move a bit slower. If you're talking about philosophy, things are positively glacial. But nonetheless, there are consensuses about certain things, like that logical positivism was generally a bad idea. We kind of coalesce around that, and if some philosopher, or somebody who got a PhD in philosophy from somewhere, tells you that logical positivism is a really respectable view, um, they just are lying to you or they don't know what they're talking about. Or they're giving you a kind of parochial view and not telling you that it's parochial.
Randy:And maybe sh, not shame on the people who believe that quote unquote expert, but shame on that expert for stepping out of...yeah.
Kyle:Yeah, exactly.
Scott:Exactly.
Kyle:Yeah. Going back to my earlier point, it's perfectly rational for someone who views that person as an expert to believe what they just told you about that, because you don't know any better.
Randy:Yeah.
Scott:Exactly. And again, I don't think that critics of you know, quote unquote white evangelicalism are primarily interested in, in criticizing, like, the median white evangelical. At least I'm not. It's the folks who have very intentionally placed themselves in the position of, you know, the guy with the answers on everything.
Kyle:Sometimes they even call themselves the Bible Answer Man.
Scott:I mean, what a ridiculous thing to say.
Kyle:That's a real person, if anybody's not familiar.
Scott:Yeah.
Randy:Thank God I'm not familiar.
Scott:To piggyback, Kyle, on what you were saying about, you know, folks doing their own research or whatever, I think you're exactly right about the consensus versus, you know, a single person who happens to have letters behind their name. Although it's always interesting to find out that the MD who's out there critiquing the public health experts is like a podiatrist or something.
Randy:Totally, totally.
Scott:But, anyway, yeah, what I want to say to folks who are, you know, doing their own research in this or that thing, right, and they're like, well, you know, the scientists are wrong, well look, I mean, given the way science works, it could very well be the case that all the scientists are wrong. But let's be clear, if all the scientists are wrong, it's not going to be for any of the reasons that you think they're wrong.
Randy:Yeah.
Scott:Right? Because you're not the expert. Right? Are the experts right about everything? No, of course not. Right? Particularly not in science. You know? But their consensus represents the best human thinking on the subject, given the available evidence, right now. Not, you know, that blog that you read by that guy. That, that's, that's not it.
Randy:Yep.
Kyle:So, speaking of famously overconfident pastors, which we've highlighted a few times.
Randy:Cue the music.
Kyle:I don't know if you remember this, but we had another Twitter exchange a little while back--sometimes I will like, quote tweet you and add, add in my, pepper in my commentary.
Randy:I bet Scott remembers all your Twitter exchanges.
Kyle:I'm sure he does. Yeah. I'm sure I just live rent free in his head. Um, so, so you said something about having listened to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, and my wife and I had just been listening to it as well, and you mentioned, I don't remember exactly what you said, but you mentioned something about how what stood out to you was, like, how a moderately clever person could do something, I forget what. And I, that stuck out to me because I thought, yes, I've had this exact thought so many times. One of, sort of, my pet interests is cult psychology, and maybe partially because I was in a very cult-like group for a good chunk of my 20s. And so I'm really interested in how people reflect on having come out of a cultish experience. And often what you find, and I think this is very present in that podcast about Mark Driscoll, is they'll be very upfront and direct about all the problems and all the harms that were done by the cult leader or the group or whatever, the ideology, but they almost always want to preserve some kernel of respectability. And usually it revolves around the genius of the cult leader. Often it does. So ex-Scientologists, for example, will rave about, you know, they'll point out all the problems with Scientology, how evil they are, how they shun their families, how they try to destroy the life of anybody that leaves, but man, L. Ron Hubbard was a genius. And if you read or listen to L. Ron Hubbard, like, just sort of from a neutral perspective, it takes like five minutes to figure out there was something seriously wrong mentally with this person. Like he has trouble putting together coherent sentences. And yet these people who have left look back on it and think there must have been something defensible down there somewhere. And you get something similar with Driscoll. Somebody like you and me, who approach it not knowing much anything about him, and we think, I guess he can, he can make people laugh from the stage, but he hasn't said anything defensible. He certainly hasn't presented an argument worth considering at any point. I can't tell that he actually has any knowledge about any of the stuff he's talking about. But even the people who want to say he did a great deal of harm, simultaneously want to say, but gosh, he was so, you know, competent or clever or fill in the blank. Do you have any read on this phenomenon? Have you noticed it? What do you think's going on?
Scott:Yeah. My sense of the situation as someone who doesn't study, you know, group psychology or, or anything like that, well I, I mean, I have reactions, one of which is that I was kind of surprised in listening to the podcast at how unfunny I found Mark Driscoll to be. I think maybe one of the, in the whole series, like maybe one of the things he said, I was like, okay, that's mildly amusing. But in general, it was like stuff that I might have found funny when I was like in eighth grade. I mean, that's, that's one reaction. The other reaction is, I think that the like, the truly talented, brilliant con men end up being like CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. I think the sort of bush league con men go to churches, because people in churches are, they're primed to, like, trust you. Right? And I've, I've had a couple of experiences in my life, one was in a church, and one was in a professional context, where I was interacting with a guy who I was convinced immediately was, like, a psychopath, you know, two different cases, right? And in both cases, it's like, why did you, like, what you're doing would be fine if you were just like running a for profit corporation. It would be shady, but like, that's what's done. Why did you come to a church? Or why did you come to, you know, a nonprofit to do this stuff? And it's like, oh, okay, because it's easy. That's why. You know, because you got a bunch of people who are trusting that, like, you're there for the reason that this institution exists, and you're operating in good faith. And it takes like a long time for people to figure out that you're not operating in good faith, and that you're playing by a totally different set of rules, and how much damage you can do in that time before people realize what's going on. If they ever do. I mean, does that make sense?
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:Yeah. Yep. Totally.
Kyle:Yeah. The true, like, truly brilliant con men, psychopaths, you probably haven't heard of because they've been successful. You might, you might work for one of them from a distance.
Randy:Might become President.
Kyle:Yeah, yeah.
Randy:Who knows. And I want to remind everyone, Scott Coley loves Jesus. He's a Christian.
Kyle:In case anyone was wondering.
Scott:Oh no, what did I say that, that required that disclaimer?
Randy:Uh, probably the whole interview, Scott, but I mean, no, it's, I love, as a Christ follower, I love being able to, and a person who loves the church and has given my life to the church, I love the practice of critiquing the church. I love the practice of critiquing the worldview that I've been given and that I've been giving people. And I'm on a spiritual evolution, and I'm on a evolution as a person. And so why wouldn't we be open to thinking that we were wrong? Why wouldn't we be open to thinking that maybe we got fooled or why wouldn't be open to thinking that certain ways of thinking are unhealthy, and we need to be open to certain things. I don't want to live in an insecure little echo chamber, or epistemic bubble as Thi would say, so I'm just saying this for our listeners to be able to just open our arms and welcome some healthy critique of things that we hold really close and near and dear to our hearts. It's good, healthy, transformative things. Scott Coley, it's been a pleasure to chat with you and to mine your your wisdom and expertise and your, your good humor. So where can people find your work, your blog, your podcast, all that stuff?
Scott:So Twitter is kind of a one stop shop. I've got a link to my website there and my podcast. So that's@scott_m_coley.
Randy:Perfect. Follow Scott and read his blog, listen to his podcast, read his book when it comes out. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Scott.
Scott:Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
Kyle:Well, that's it for this episode of A Pastor and Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying the show as much as we are. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us at patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being a good person.
Randy:Also, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, and Spotify. These help new people discover the show and we may even read your review in a future episode. If it's good enough.
Kyle:If anything we said really pissed you off, or if you just have a question you'd like us to answer, or if you'd just like to send us booze, send us an email at pastorandphilosopher@gmail.com.
Randy:Get all of our hot takes on Twitter at @PPWBPodcast,@RandyKnie, and@robertkwhitaker, and find transcripts and links to all of our episodes at pastorandphilosopher.buzzsprout.com. See you next time.
Kyle:Cheers.